Tuesday, March 25, 2014

One of my best friends teaches line dancing every week. I rarely go but I do enjoy it when I do. For a variety of reasons, I decided to go last week. I knew Babe would enjoy it and Bud was excited about the prospect of running around on the auditorium stage. This is the outfit Babe wore when we went...

Babe inherited her ability and love of dance from someone else, no question, because she did GREAT for never having done it before! But, as expected, she got a little tired of it after about 3 songs and went to play with Bud. But this post isn't really about line dancing, nor about my daughter's stellar outfit choices. It's about Bud. Because what happened when we were leaving is when the real story began. I finished dancing and went to round up the kids in the gym. They had been playing with LC's niece (Oh, I should mention that LC is what I will use to refer to my boyfriend) so they had played an invigorating game of tag and all sorts of other games that left them hot and sweaty. When I went in both kids had their shirts and socks off. It was an especially attractive look on Babe with that crazy skirt! As I walked in, Bud saw me and, being the monkey he is, scrambled up some mats that were rolled up in the corner. I WISH I had my camera to record what happened next...but I didn't so you'll have to settle for my awful reenactments using a drawing app on my iPad.So I walked into the gym to find him like this...

And because his effortless climbing skills always amaze me I started to fumble for my iPad so I could tell him to do it again so I could catch it on video. I wrestled my iPad out of my bag, got the camera up and ready, looked up and Bud was GONE! WTF? Until I realized...

Yeah, he was IN the mat!

Crap!

As soon as I got to the mat, I knew the only way to get him out was to tip him over. It was a big mat! (Please note: my drawing-to-scale skills are nonexistent) So I told him what I was going to do, reached up, grabbed a hold of the mat, and tipped him over.

As I let go of the mat I told him to crawl out...but what I didn't count on was that the heavy mat would compress...effectively squishing him inside and FREAKING HIM OUT!!!

So I quickly struggled to picked the mat back up and rested it on my knees and told him to slide out of the bottom. Except that he was in full panic mode and all he kept saying was I'm stuck! I'm stuck! HELP!!! So I told him to give me his hands. You know what? He was STUCK!! Because he didn't have a shirt on and was sweaty, and now panicky, he was completely stuck to the inside! I pulled and pulled!

Friday, March 21, 2014

For privacy sake I’m not going to go into full details, but what is
helpful to know is that I used to be best friends with someone until she
completely betrayed my trust in one of the worst possible ways. At the time I
really wanted to put it behind us and remain friends. I tried, but I just couldn’t.
It was too raw and even though rational me said it was ok to forgive and
forget, emotional me was all “Nut uh girl! She best be steppin!”

It’s been
almosta year now and I’ve seen her a
time or two but it was in passing and that was it. The hard part about this
whole thing is that her son and Bud are best friends. Best, best, best friends!
And this year they aren’t in the same class so they barely see each other at
school and they don’t get to hang out outside of school either. As hurt as I
was that still made me feel bad for the kids. They can’t control any of that
and I hated to see them pay for it.

No one has ever faulted me for ending the friendship, in fact
people thought I was crazy to even try to make it work. But, last night I saw
her at the local ice cream place (ironically, the same place we met for the
first time several years ago) and we chatted for a bit. I felt like I was meeting a past lover who I never got over. I realized how much I missed her!
She’s fun and spontaneous, but also a planner, and we get along so well with no
effort at all.

I think I want to try to start up our friendship again. Part of me is
excited at the prospect of having her as a friend again. The other part screams
that I’m an idiot and if she could hurt me that badly once, she’s not going to
hesitate to do it again. Am I just setting myself up for more pain? Or should I
forgive her and move on? Maybe I’ve already forgiven her. Her actions were a
catalyst for other things but they certainly weren’t the “reason” things went
down the way they did. Maybe I should even thank her, because really everything
has worked out for the best. I think maybe it will be easier to forgive than
forget. But I think it might be worth a shot. I’m pretty sure we won’t ever be
as close as we once were, but I think that’s ok. It will just be nice to have
an old friend back, and someone to take excursions to the zoo with, and all the
other things that I’m so bad about doing. So I think I’ll try to
forgive…and if I’m lucky, even forget.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Bud is obsessed with money. We play Monopoly in every spare minute
and all he wants to do (and all he does…the little jerk) is land on free
parking. He constantly talks about how much money he has saved and what he can
buy with it. We had a conversation in the car about who was on what bills. I,
shamefully, didn’t know very many so when we got home he asked if we could google
it. Did you know there is a $100,000 bill? He said he wanted it. I told him so
did I! He asked if we could play the lotto, and then quickly added that if we
win I should give all the money to him because it was his idea. Money, money,
money, money, money.

A couple of weeks ago when my mom was up for a visit, he asked her
to play bank. He was “buying and selling” cars and was giving pretty accurate
values to my mom. But the piѐce de rѐsistance was this weekend when he went to
a birthday party at the local, in-door mini-golf place. I dropped him off, and
like any good mom, I hightailed it out of there so I didn’t have to socialize.
When I went back to pick him up the birthday boy’s mom informed me that Ryan
had a dollar in his pocket for winning a round of mini-golf. I didn’t think
much of it and I told him I was proud of him for playing so well that he won a
prize! Until we got into the car and I got the full story: He challenged the
mom to a round of mini-golf and bet her money that he could beat her. They got
done, after he sufficiently whipped her, where she proceeded to try to give him
a “gold doubloon” (fake gold coin) as his winnings. He told her that he meant
the bet to be a real dollar…not fake
money! (The very notion!) He went on
to say that he was glad he won because he didn’t actually have any money on
him, but he felt good about the bet anyway because he was pretty sure he’d win.
Bud…coming to the a local OTB near you!